Ballad of the Black Swan
by ShivaVixen
Summary: [Warnings: OC Focus, slight AU] There are thousands of stories told by ballad, some which fade into obscurity, some which are made up on the go, and others that are only known by those who lived it. Of course, this ballad would be better if the Bard would remember the main character isn't imaginary, and the other characters have things they have to do as well.


**Roughly, this is set in DAII, and will focus on OC characters. Normally I'd start with Canon characters and then place an OC fic, but, well, this idea came to me while I was trying to write a story about the canon characters. Slow Updates, I've got other projects to finish (eventually- those are all also going slowly.)**

**This OC story is an experiment in playing with the usual OC stereotypes seen, and will have OCs interacting with characters canon to Origins, II and one of the tie-in books. (Which I do not own and have no input in.) However, there will be no romance between the two groups.**

**If I get a word wrong, please let me know- the different languages are a bit confusing.**

**Given the various outcomes of the games, this could also be considered an AU, but is not intended to be. I will accept some suggestions for OCs, as I have run out of characters for a rival group. (I need a rogue, a berserker, and an archer.) The OCs I don't use will be given cameos.**

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><p><strong>Ballad of the Black Swan<strong>

**Enter the Swan (and the Bard)**

Slave hunting was a usually profitable job with a low risk, as most of the time, the escaped slaves in question were too terrified at having been found to fight back. Men who were good at this sort of job were intimidating and known for their cruelty, or at least, most of them were.

Tomas was neither, compared to his fellow hunters. He was lanky, unable to develop the large muscles that their leader, a man creatively named Brutus, had. To tell the truth, Tomas would have much preferred to be a Ranger and deal with animals instead of people, but refusing to work for family was just asking for trouble. So, Tomas was not intimidating or cruel, just like the slave they'd been hired to catch:

"Damn Knife-ear!"- was anything but terrified and unable to fight back.

Tomas would have enjoyed watching this, if his life wasn't also on the line, as the elf did a masterful job of causing chaos, causing them to attack each other. The sight of grown men struggling to catch one person was truly hilarious.

Unfortunately, if the elf's game continued, Brutus would be more likely to kill the elf and inform their client that it had gone mad and needed to be put down.

Tomas managed to lasso the elf as it began its second pass through the hired thugs, and Brutus, calculatingly intelligent despite his muscles being used more than his brain, pinned the elf before it could escape.

"If you weren't wanted in one piece, knife-ear, you'd be losing those legs of yours." Brutus growled.

The elf, with a clear lack of self-preservation, beamed. "I could still outrun you, _shem_." It was promptly stunned by a hit to the head with one ham-sized fist.

"Tie it up! You two, go get the cart!" Brutus snapped out orders, and Tomas quickly tied the elf to a tree with a soft sigh.

"As amusing as watching you run circles around my intrepid leader is, you might want to stay quiet and let him forget about you." Tomas informed the blinking elf, who was still recovering from the hit.

"You may have a point." The elf smiled at him. "Name's, well, you can just call me Clef, I'm a Bard by profession, you?"

"… Tomas, a hunter, don't get any ideas, Clef, I may not be like them, but I still have to work with them." Tomas took a step back, satisfied with the knots. He quickly looked over the elf, a dark-haired male with pale-white tattoos scrolling across his visible skin, dressed fairly well, and probably considered good looking enough to warm someone's bed. Tomas jerked his thoughts away from that road, it was healthier for all involved if he didn't feel sorry for the elf.

"Let me guess, you're related to the ham-fisted one?"

"No, my cousin is the one that manages this group. I owe him a debt."

"I'll try not to kill you, then." The elf offered rather cheerily, Tomas shook his head as he walked away.

"We'll leave in the morning, too dark to travel with the cart now." Brutus announced, glaring at the sky and then at the elf. "Tomas, you've got first patrol."

Clef watched as the rather decent slave hunter headed to the edges of camp. _Shems_ were weird, in his opinion, doing jobs that clearly went against their natural talents, usually because their family demanded them to.

Clef had been born and raised as a dalish, and had received his Vallasin only days before he and his friends strayed too far in exploring the area they'd settled in, and gotten captured by slavers. He had no idea what had happened to the others, the only one he knew for sure was somewhere in Telvinter having been purchased by a lesser Magister, while he had been taken in by an Orlaisian nobleman, who trained him into being a bard and assassin for the stupid game the nobles played.

His refusal to tell anyone his name had made the lord give him the name 'Clef' and hopefully, he'd make it back to the Dalish and take back his real name someday.

A hit to his ribs startled him into paying attention, and Clef realized a little too late that Tomas was probably the one that kept Hamfist from beating him up when he was re-captured. The man was gone on patrol, and wouldn't be back until someone went to switch watches.

Which would probably be whenever Hamfist the idiot stopped using him as a punching bag. Another hit to his ribs made him yelp, and Clef thought one might have cracked. It was followed by another punch to the side of his head. While the stars were bursting in front of his eyes, someone's hand grabbed his hair, forcing his head up to look at the leader of the group.

"Can't do anything permanent, knife-ear, but bruises aren't that permanent, are they?"

"Right you are, sirrah." Clef smiled, and then received a backhand that split his lip. He lost track after 8 hits, and since keeping silent caused them to hit harder, he didn't bother to stop the groans and whimpers that escaped him. Thankfully, after the blow that split his lip, the hits were focused on his torso to keep from damaging his face; though Clef was more concerned about the possible brain-damage than his looks.

A loud howl interrupted the next punch, and Clef tried to see why through the hair that had fallen into his eyes.

Something was attacking the camp. Clef blinked as a marbari crouched in front of him, growling at a hunter before taking out his throat. A slip of a person cut down the hunters quickly, though it was clear they were losing stamina fast.

As Hamfist went down from a blade through his heart, the person turned, and Clef would have raised an eyebrow.

It was a human female with a fencing saber, the lower half of her face covered with a dirty-white scarf. Her clothes were entirely mismatched, and her saber had clearly seen better days, given there was a large chunk taken out of it.

Really, she could have been a part of a ballad what with her entrance and rescue of him, not to mention the mystery factor with part of her face covered, but the female was so dirty she looked more like she belonged in the poorest part of a city begging for scraps. Her dark hair was oily and plastered to her head, he couldn't even tell the length because it was plaited and hidden under her scarf as well.

She didn't look at him once the last man fell to her blade, instead giving a potion to the dog before taking one herself. It was when she started looting the bodies, still ignoring him, that Clef decided he should speak up.

"Miss, would you mind cutting me down?" Clef mentally corrected himself, as the woman startled- she hadn't been ignoring him, she hadn't even noticed him.

"Sure." She said, it was a bit of a whisper, and Clef rolled his eyes as she finished looting the body before walking over and cutting him down. "Better?"

"Much, why'd you kill them if you wanted to rob them?" Clef was mildly surprised when she gave him a potion, though she quickly turned back to looting the bodies.

"Don't like slavers much." She responded, still a bit of a whisper, and Clef would have missed it if she hadn't been looting the body he was sitting next too.

"Can't you speak up?"

"No."

"You- you're bleeding?!" Clef saw the fleck of color on the scarf over her mouth, and grabbed her arm so he could pull it down, concerned about the woman who had saved his life. Surprisingly, she didn't fight or rage about him doing it, and the Marbari just sat down and watched. She almost seemed resigned as he pulled the scarf from her face, trying to see why she was bleeding despite the potion.

He almost regretted it. The woman's face was mostly intact, save for a large scar (which might have actually been more than one, just so close together it looked like a single scar) marring her lips, chin and throat. It was still rather red and raw looking and her lower lip was bleeding a bit. Clearly not damage from the fight, though it might have been the exertion that made her lip bleed.

"Yeah, it's ugly." She whispered, and for a moment, Clef though her tongue looked damaged too, except she pulled the scarf back up before he could confirm it.

"Who did that to you?" Clef asked despite himself. With the scarf removed, she had looked so, young and well, she might not have been a beauty of no-compare without the scar, but she would have still been attractive enough for a husband.

"Need anything from them?" She pulled away, not answering the question, and gestured to the corpses littering the campsite. Her hand went towards her throat before she pulled it away.

"Stop talking if it hurts." Clef frowned at her, and she tilted her head as she let her hand come up and press against her throat and mouth briefly. He felt a little bad about that, and wondered if there was something he could do- then he remembered he owed her his life (or freedom, really, but 'saved my life' sounded much better, he thought)."You saved my life, do you want anything in return?" He knew that men had varying honor codes, and something about the way she was refusing to acknowledge him outside of the bare pleasantries told him she had some sort of code that she didn't want to force on him by accident- or have him force on her.

The female shook her head, and gave a casual, if fast, dismissive gesture. She turned back to a body and stumbled a little, and Clef found his mind made up for him. Whether or not she wanted it, he was going to travel with her, find out her story (or make one up, that seemed to be more fun) and maybe get her help in his own quest.

"Very well then, as you seem to not have a request, I must follow you and help you on your journey." The female stared at him as if he had grown two heads, stripped naked and danced on one of the _shem_ altar's to Andraste. "Don't say anything, Milady, I am now honor bound to help you." He put his right hand over his heart and bowed, trying not to grin as she made a sound of frustration.

The Marbari watched from the spot it claimed as its mistress gained another companion, and laid his head down.

Clef hadn't said that because he found her intriguing or pretty, he just found her a promising potential ally, and he would never admit to anyone that he really wanted to use her as a way to hunt down his missing friends, the story potential actually only an interesting side note compared to the fact that if he had a 'mistress' he could walk around human towns without a second glance. (He had been avoiding towns as much as possible, actually, though he did look at them to figure out if it was safe to enter. In fact, there was a fairly large town near by that he knew had some rather good shops for armor, weapons and clothes.)

That said, the female in front of him was a mystery, with a few tweaks to armor and wardrobe (and a new sword, really, that thing was more rust than metal, now that he looked at it) she'd be a perfect protagonist, much better than a dalish turned slave, turned bard/assassin, turned escapee trying to save a friend. Even her disfigurement could be spun to be part of the story.

Which of course lead him back to the question of how she'd received it, but that was something for another time. For now, there was a town nearby that they should go to, to start his cunning plan.

First, he had to learn her name, which only got him a blank stare and slight shake of her head.

"Really, Milady, don't you have a name?"

She looked at him in annoyance, and he realized she might not actually have one- no doubt the scar was once accompanied by other wounds, possibly head-trauma that caused amnesia. "Hmm, then I'll keep using Milady and come up with a proper title to use in town. How do you feel about birds?" His previous 'master', though low on the scale of nobility, had had a rather nice menagerie with many exotic birds. A couple had struck him as rather good motifs for a story character. Milady just shrugged, apparently deciding to ignore him for now. "Now, I think there's a town nearby, if you'd like, I can get us a place to stay, and get you a new sword- don't you know anything about equipment?" Milady looked at him in annoyance, apparently unimpressed with the way he was inserting himself into her life. Tellingly, though, she didn't try attacking him or setting the Marbari on him.

As she started walking, the Marbari falling in on her left, he slipped over to her right side and continued speaking. "When was the last time you were in a town, anyway?" Milady shrugged, apparently resigned that he was not going to leave her. "Well, you really need new equipment, that sword looks like it will break in your next fight. I know there's a shop for armor there too, you need it if you're going to keep fighting the way you do." Clef added, hearing what might have been a soft sigh.

Milady stumbled more than a few times, and he wondered if her leg was causing her trouble. At one point, he had to catch her before she fell into a ditch, and found he could feel her ribs under her clothes. She wasn't too underweight, for her height, but she apparently hadn't had decent meals for a while. He also got a good look at her eyes, and found they had either been blackened in a fight, or she hadn't slept in a long while- he bet on the latter. (They were rather pretty, with gold flecks in the brown.)

"When we get to town, Milady, please leave all the talking and shopping to me, you should rest. How much money do you have?" His amount was rather poor, actually.

Milady sighed, and passed over her inventory pouch (one of many magic pouches that could hold more than it appeared). She was oddly trusting, but then again, the Marbari was watching from its position close by, and would probably tear him apart if he did try to steal it.

"Oh, that's quite a bit, should be enough … you might want to find a better place to put it though, pickpockets and all." Clef was surprised by the amount, there was enough to probably buy the town they were traveling too, and wondered how many bandits and hunters the female walking next to him had killed.

It was an easy thing, throwing a cloak over her head and getting a room fit for a noble and settling in Milady, who had pretty much collapsed into bed- potions were no substitute for actual sleep and food, and he got the impression that was how she had been living. Leaving the Marbari to watch her, Clef quickly went and bought decent lightweight armor and clothes, having come to a decision on her theme just before entering the town.

"Now Milady, your lack of theme makes it difficult for anyone to believe you are a noble, so I've come up with one that will allow your eccentricity to be both notable and ignored without copying some other noble." He announced after he returned with his purchases, and Milady had woken, apparently resigned to his meddling with her life. Though given the brief spark of amusement when he came in muttering about prices for armor customization, she probably found the way he was fussing over her attire amusing. "Black Swans are a rarity, and thus will be both mysterious and yet common for a noble to have." He showed her the crest he'd gotten made, a black swan with a saber under it, surrounded by a ribbon.

"Swans are white." Milady whispered, apparently not quite believing him. The Marbari was resting its head on her lap, ignoring the conversation.

"There is a type of swan, found in the south, that are black and they have red beaks instead of yellow." He smiled. "Now, I've gotten you new armor and clothes, including underthings- I didn't know you could blush that red." He added in amusement. "I'll ask for a bath to be drawn for you, and then we can discus my terms of service once you're dressed."

"What you want me to do." Milady looked at him, and Clef blinked, she was studying him, amusement returning. "I wander without a purpose- you want to do something."

"Err, yes." Clef mentally kicked himself, he had taken her lack of argument as a sign she was easily malleable. He should have known it wasn't that easy. Though the fact she wasn't arguing meant she was willing to listen … "I'll just, go …"

"Talk later." She nodded, apparently tired of speaking once more.

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><p>The Inn maid who was given the task was a world weary woman, who wasn't that impressed with nobles as a whole. She was a little curious that the elf-servant had paid extra for her to help his lady bathe, and not speak of anything she saw, but given the orlaisian propensity for masks (she was from Fereldon, originally) she figured it was some normal precaution. The elf had said her handmaiden had gotten killed by bandits that had attacked them, and she was reluctant to find a replacement too soon.<p>

The young lady in question, however, seemed a little shy about needing the help of a servant to bathe. She was also rather beaten up, a few scars on her arms, legs and sides, and clearly hadn't had a decent meal in a long time. The Inn maid found herself torn between approving that some noble had been brought down to experience 'commoner problems', and concern that such a young woman was clearly suffering. She'd gotten a glimpse of the scar on her throat and chin (the young noble was trying to hide her lower face) and her motherly instincts railed at the thought someone had done that to another.

The maid helped her dress, amused at her dislike of the corset (she really didn't need it, though, she had a small enough ribcage that her breasts seemed to be a size larger than they were, and still didn't need the extra binding) and was surprised when the woman gave her another small bag of coins once she dried and re-plaited her hair for her.

The young woman had never spoken throughout the time (and after seeing the scar on her throat, the maid had realized it wasn't out of distaste for the help of a commoner), but the way her eyes lit up in gratitude spoke more than the small bag of coins.

"My name is Anessa, please, call on me if you ever return to our inn." The young noble nodded, and Anessa slipped out, not even telling the other maids anything despite the usual gossip session they had about their customers and their prying.

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><p>Clef re-entered the room with a tray of dinner, and was rather surprised that Milady actually had curves, her previous outfit being a size or two too big. She wasn't a big breasted and wide-hipped woman, but she had curves appropriate for her size. The black clothes and dark armor made her appear a little shorter than she was. More impressive was that her hair, now no longer oily and dirty, was a light-chestnut sort of color, and the plait itself reached her mid-back. (Chestnut being the type of coloring his former master had described his wife's favorite horse with. He probably shouldn't use that in a song, however.)<p>

She had wrapped the red scarf he had gotten her around her lower face, and was busy trying to comb a knot out of the Marbari's fur.

"Shall I get that for you, Milady?" Clef offered, and Milady glanced up, the Marbari looking at him as well, annoyed that he had distracted Milady from brushing him. Milady simply brushed the marbari with two swift strokes, removing the knot, and patting the dog in order to get the food. "I guess I should explain why I want your patronage, huh?"

"Escaped Slave wanting to serve someone." Milady pointed at him, tilting her head. "You want something." She grimaced, apparently speaking that much was her limit.

"Right, well, I need to find information about a friend who also became a slave, and the easiest way to do that is ask about a town. However, as you've noticed, it's a bit odd if I don't have a mistress to report to." Clef explained. "I get pounced on by slave hunters rather quickly."

"So, cover?" She pointed to herself.

"Well, yes. I do owe you a life debt, so I would protect you not just use you." Clef explained, his previous belief that he would never admit to wanting to use her going out the window. "Sorry, I took your silence to mean you were easily led, despite seeing the damage."

Milady shrugged, waving her hand in a dismissive gesture. "Wandering alone was boring."

"Right, well, I guess that means you'll help?" Clef tilted his head, his initial plan had been far too flimsy, he realized now as it fell apart and he found himself actually asking for her help instead of using her.

"Yes." Her whisper-voice actually had some amusement, and she held out a hand. "Friend?"

"Friend." Clef agreed, taking her hand. He had no idea what was going on through her mind, but given the way she acted thus far, he was sure she wasn't going to betray him.

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><p><strong>Well, we've got the first 3 party members, going to be three more (technically, two will be just NPCs that tag along, but who cares?).<strong>

**Clef's got a few issues with planning and judging character, he kinda forgets people don't always behave 2 dimensionally, even in a story; Milady doesn't really care, she's kind of happy that someone's seen her face and actually stuck around instead of running. Neither of them are sexually interested in each other, though. (We'll see if that changes, my muse is rather contrary sometimes.)**

**To re-iterate, I'm going to be playing around with OC tropes that normally show up in Dragon Age fics, just for fun.**

**Yes, some characters from the games will show up, later on.**


End file.
